Welcome to the inaugural August 2017 edition of "Writing Life Essentials," a monthly hand-curated list of contests, grants, scholarships, submissions calls, and awards, with a focus on opportunities that are local, free to apply, and/or designed to give voice to under represented communities

My four-year-old has been refusing to eat dinner lately.

Sometimes she tells me that she’s too tired to eat, sometimes she protests the tiny specks of color that somehow made it into her meal. Once she tried explaining that some people are eating people and some people are not.

At first, I thought I’d let her suffer the natural consequences of her actions. But once I realized that the natural consequences of her actions involved her waking me up at 2 a.m. to ask for a bowl of cheerios, I figured I needed a new strategy.

Groups of writers can be competitive, cagey, and unwilling to share what they know, but when Grub Instructor Jonathan Escoffery came to Boston, he found the supportive community he'd been looking for. Teen writers can catch Jonathan in person on Saturday, October 21st, in his YAWP class, Publishing Your Short Work: Submission Tips to Get Your Work Out There! This essay was originally published by The Writers' Room of Boston, where Jonathan is the 2017 Ivan Gold Fellow.

When I arrived in Boston three years ago, it was my second cross-country move as an adult. The first took me ...

So you've written a novel; now what? In this series, debut author-to-be Crystal King describes the traditional publication process from start to finish: the lead-up, what to expect along the way, and how building her social media platform has made a difference. In this installment of "On the Path to Publication" Crystal talks about working on her second book in the wake of her debut novel, FEAST OF SORROW.